Watergate Essay Research Paper Watergate ScandalWatergate was

Watergate Essay, Research Paper

Watergate Scandal

Watergate was the name of the biggest political scandal in the history of the United States.

It included various illegal activities constructed and carried out to help reelect President Richard

Nixon in the 1972 presidential elections. Watergate included burglary, wire tapping, violations of

campaign financing laws, and sabotage and attempted use of government agencies to harm

political opponents. It also involved a cover-up of conduct. There were about forty people

charged with crimes in the scandal and related crimes. Most of them were convicted by juries or

plead guilty. Watergate involved more high-level government officials than any previous scandal

in the United States. It led to the conviction of former Attorney General John Mitchell and two

of Nixon s top aides, John Erlichmen and H.R. Haldeman, in 1975. Former Secretary of

Commerce Maurice H. Stans, a leader of Nixon s reelection campaign pled guilty to Watergate

criminal charges and was fined $5000. Watergate also resulted in the resignation of Attorney

General Richard Kleindienst in 1973.

Watergate really began in 1969 when the White House staff made up a list of enemies.

This so-called enemies list was kept of people the president s men wanted retribution on.

Nixon had adversaries which included 200 liberal politicians, journalists, and actors. When people

made public speeches against Vietnam, agents found out secret information about them that

would harm them. The Nixon campaign routinely engaged in unethical dirty tricks . These

deceptions were led by White House staffers Charles Colson, Special Counsel to the President;

Deputy Campaign Director of the Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP) Jeb Magruder;

Dwight Chapin, Deputy Assistant to the President; and Donald Segretti, an attorney. These

corrupt antics included following Democratic political candidates, assembling reprots on thier

personal lives, forged letters on candidates letterheads, altering schedules of campaign

appearances, placing harrassing phone calls, and manufacturing false information, then leaking it

to the press. The goal of these tricks was to help eliminate the strongest candidates from the

Democratic primaries. In New Hampshire, the campaign of front runner Senator Edmund Muskie

of Maine was ruined. False rumors circulated to newspapers. The day before the election,

Senator Muskie lashed out at the press. This damaged Muskie s eventempered reputation and

contributed to his failure to win the 1972 Democratic nomination for the president.

The Special Investigations Unit, better known as the plumbers unit, was created as a

result of the Pentagon Papers being leaked to the New York Times in June of 1971. The

Pentagon Papers were secret defense department documents on the American involvement in the

Vietnam War. They revealed a pattern of government deception related to Vietnam. The Papers

were leaked to the New York Times by Dr. Daniel Ellsberg, who worked on the staff of the

National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger. The Nixon administration responded by stopping

publication of the papers and charging Ellsberg with espionage. The plumbers were to block new

leaks and control public knowledge of Vietnam policy. President Richard Nixon ordered

domestic policy adviser, John Erlichman, to streamline leak plugging by creating the plumbers

unit. Erlichman s deputy, Egil Krogh, Jr. and David Young, a member of the National Security

Council staff, hired former FBI agent G. Gordon Liddy and former CIA operative E. Howard

Hunt to run thier illegal secret operation. Plumbers set wiretaps, opened mail, and conducted

break-ins in order to gain information about leaking. They targeted political enemies of the Nixon

administration for harrassment. Ellsberg was at the top of that list. In September of 1971, the

plumbers unit broke into the office of Dr. Lewis Fielding, Ellsberg s psychiatrist. They wanted

to find degrading information about Ellsberg before his espionage trial. The case against Ellsberg

was dismissed because of the burglary.

On June 17, 1972, five men were arrested for breaking into the offices of the Democratic

National Committee at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. The men were adjusting

electronic equipment that they had installed in May. The police apprehended a walkie talkie, forty

rolls of unexposed film, two 35 millimeter cameras, lock picks, pen-sized teargas guns, and

bugging devices. Four of the men who were arrested came from Miami, Florida. They were

Bernard Barker, Frank Sturigis, Virgillio Gonzalez, and Eugenio Martinez. The other man was

James McCord, security coordinator for the CRP. The two co-plotters were Gordon Liddy and

Howard Hunt. Their arrest eventually uncovered a White House sponsored plan of surveillance

of political opponents and a trail of conspiracy that led to many of the higheset officials in the

land.

A secret

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